Not that I needed yet another IM application, but I downloaded Google Talk today anyway.

It’s adorable. If you have a gmail account, you can use it too. (It’s still in beta.) My gmail addy is mushmook@gmail.

If you need a gmail account, let me know, I’ve still got invites.

The only thing I’ve ever wanted my TiVo to record was the final episode of Six Feet Under.

It failed to record it.

It recorded every other episode this season with no problem, it just forgot the final freaking episode of the whole show.

Dumb thing.

Luckily, Shigeki put the episode up on his site and let me eat up his server space and bandwidth downloading all 716MB of it. Thank you so much, Shegeki!

Okay, it’s official. Google has a crush on me.

I added a gallery to my site last week (old pics of our 2004 trip to the Telluride Blues ‘n’ Brews fest). THREE DAYS LATER, I was third for the search string “Telluride Blues 2004.” Third!

That’s just crazy! Do you know how they do these search ranking algorhythms? Successful click-throughs! Links! Relevance! None of which my gallery has! Do you know what people pay for that kind of rankage?!?

Google is clearly in love with me. Which is fine, because I’m soooo in love with Google.

A guy in Support transferred a call to me, saying, “Angela was on hold for you regarding a personal matter?”

“Uh, okay,” I said. He clicked off and I said, “Thank you for holding, this is Michelle. May I help you?”

“Is this Michelle?”

“Yes.”

“Michelle Mook?”

Ah. I know that style. This is a collections call. “Yes. Now who are you, and what do you want?”

It was a woman from Capital One’s pre-legal department, calling to collect a debt. Continue reading I just hung up on someone →

God, I miss coffee.

I love coffee. I used to drink a cup every morning. I love the smell of coffee, the ritual of making coffee, and the nice buzz I used to get from drinking it.

I don’t drink it any more, of course, because I now function in a state of constant ampedness due to having developed this stupid panic syndrome, but I still love coffee.

Walking into a coffee shop makes me faint with desire. Getting up on misty, cool mornings makes me long for a hot cup of something bitter and rich, with cream and sugar. Seeing a bottle of Bailey’s makes me wish I could still toss a shot of it into a hot cuppa joe.

Oh coffee, coffee, I still love you so! Don’t forget me!

“This is the new America. Our crazed sense of entitlement, our nearly rabid desire for easy access to mountains of bargain-basement junk has led to the upsurge of soulless big-box shops which has, in turn, led to a deadly sense of prefabricated, vacuous sameness wherever we go. And here’s the kicker: We think it’s good. We think it helps, brings jobs, tax money, affordable goods. We call it progress. We call it choice. It is the exact opposite.”

The San Francico Chronicle’s Mark Morford tells it like it is in Bring out yer dead — plague is already here.

Read it. And weep.

I haven’t always been smart enough to use a CMS. Well, I used to use Blogger, but before that I updated my blog manually. If you wanna see the archives, just click-click-click!
Continue reading Blog History →

This morning I slept in again. When I woke I ran a brush through my hair, grabbed my Iowa Chicks Knitting t-shirt and a pair of old jeans and put them on, and rushed out the door.

Well, not before tossing a piece of lasagna into a tupperware and grabbing a fork. I made a pan of lasagna for dinner last night and there’s not much better for a morning commute snack than pasta.

I’m babbling. The point is, I hurried. Too much to look at my ass in a mirror before leaving.

Walking into the data center (I’m at work today because Buzz is on vay-cay) I saw my reflection in the glass door and thought, ‘Huh. So that’s why people in their late 30’s look like dorks. They’re old enough to own clothes that are ten years old and still fit.’

I’m wearing Levi’s low-slung relaxed fit wide leg jeans, and I’m lucky I live in Iowa where no one will (a) see me or (b) care how much a big dork I am.

I want a pair of old-style 501’s that fit. Is there such a thing? Looking at my jeans this morning I noticed that while they’re all Levi’s, they’re all completely different styles.

I hate jeans. Especially women’s jeans. This is why I wear skirts, like, all the time.

For some reason they’ve got a big trench dug down the center of Burlington, and traffic’s funneled into one lane each direction, and there are about five million orange cones set out, and ‘USE THIS LANE’ signs with arrows and flashing lights, and there is literally tons of heavy equipment all painted orange, and it’s loud and smelly but populated by deeply tanned, shirtless road crew guys who’ll smile if you wave at them.

I decided to have take-out India Cafe buffet for lunch today, and ended up walking about eight blocks to get there and back, even though it’s only three blocks away. (No way was I going to attempt hopping over the trench in an ankle-length skirt and heeled sandals in front of backed-up semi traffic, thank you very much. My clutz gene is too expressed to take that kind of risk. Especially on the way back with the food.)

I got my lunch, paid the cute guy with the endless eyelashes and sparkling black eyes, and sauntered my circuitious route back to the office, where I sat at my desk reading blogs and eating. Of course I got some dhal on my shirt. I don’t think I’ve eaten a single thing without getting any on my clothes in the past five years. I don’t know why this is, other than God hates me and wants me to suffer. Continue reading I've got dhal makhani on my boob →

I love Google Earth and I want to have its baby.